Court: No age limit on OTC emergency contraception

The FDA must allow emergency contraception to be sold over the counter with no age restrictions, a federal court judge ruled Friday.

The ruling is a blow to President Barack Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, both of whom support restricting OTC access to ”morning after pills” for anyone under age 17. Younger women had required a prescription.

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Sebelius “has failed to offer a coherent justification" for restricting the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraceptives to “the overwhelming majority of women of all ages who may have need for those drugs and who are capable of understanding their correct use,” Judge Edward R. Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York wrote.

He said the FDA must lift age and point-of-sale restrictions within 30 days, and he called Sebelius’s 2011 decision regarding age restrictions for emergency contraception “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent.”

DOJ spokeswoman Allison Price said that the department “is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly.”

Groups that champion broader access to contraception called the ruling a victory.

“Today science has finally prevailed over politics,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit. “This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine all weighed in to praise the decision, too.

“Today’s ruling acknowledges clear evidence that emergency contraception is a safe and effective method of backup birth control for all women of reproductive age,” Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine President Debra Katzman said in a statement.

Anti-abortion group Americans United for Life said the decision was concerning.

“I’m deeply, deeply troubled by this,” Americans United for Life President Charmaine Yoest told POLITICO. “We see the FDA and the judge gambling with women’s health in the interests of abortion politics."

Late in 2011, Sebelius overruled the FDA’s recommendation that Plan B One-Step be available over the counter to women and girls of all ages, stipulating that women under age 17 must have a prescription to get it. Obama weighed in to express public support for her decision.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed its initial challenge in 2005, after the FDA refused to approve an application from a drug manufacturer to make Plan B available over the counter to women of any age. In 2006, the FDA agreed to make Plan B available over the counter to women 18 and older. In 2009, the court ruled that the FDA had to drop its age restriction from 18 to 17.

The Center reopened the case in 2012, challenging Sebelius’s announcement on Plan B One-Step and the FDA’s denial of its citizen petition to make Plan B available over the counter.

HHS had no immediate comment.

Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 9:09 a.m. on April 5, 2013.